The Plant Press

Vicki Funk: Appreciations and reflections

The Department of Botany received a great number of messages expressing sympathy and condolences upon the passing of our friend and colleague, Vicki Funk. Here are just a few.

Kristen Michelle Van Neste

I had the pleasure of working with Vicki Funk while I was a botany intern at NMNH. She taught me that after a hard day in the field, it is important to treat yourself. Vicki always bought the two of us a scoop of ice cream before returning to the office. She taught me not to take work so seriously by purchasing a bright blue wagon for me to pull my research equipment in and telling me stories of how she used to ride a scooter to meetings that were in the adjacent building. She taught me not to focus on myself but listen to the ideas of others. There was always time to talk in her office, no matter how much work she needed to complete. She taught me to treat everyone equally. She gave me, a lowly intern, the same respect she gave the Secretary of the Smithsonian. Everyone was equal in her eyes. Most importantly, Vicki Funk taught me how to have fun while conducting meaningful science. She was always the first to laugh at herself, to smile in the morning, and to get her work done before catching the afternoon metro home. When I think of the Smithsonian, I think of Vicki’s office filled with sunflower decorations and knick-knacks. I think of her constant smile and her admirable confidence. Vicki Funk was as beautiful as the sunflowers she studied. She will be dearly missed.

Morgan Gostel

Sometimes a person enters your life and you're never the same. When they're gone it's all you can do but wonder on their imprint upon you. Vicki Funk is one of those people... and right now I sure miss her. Vicki changed my life - and I know she changed the lives of everyone who knew her. I met Vicki at my first botany meeting in 2009. She greeted me with friendliness and warmth as I came to learn she meets everyone. I know I am just one of many in this world who feels the same and I will never meet another Vicki Funk. It is all one can hope to leave the world a little better than you found it and Vicki leaves it better than anyone I have ever been fortunate enough to know. She leaves a legacy that will live forever and only grow stronger, and I hope to be able to continue that legacy in whatever small way I can. I know that the best way I can remember Vicki is to do good work, better the lives of others, and stand up for what I know to be true. Knowing Vicki has made me a better person, a better botanist, a better friend, and taught me part of her incredible way of doing these things selflessly and with enthusiasm and joy. I miss my friend who shared her passion for her life’s work, her wisdom, and her amazing sense of humor. You're with us forever through your work and I hope to honor you through mine.

Richard M. Bateman 

I arrived at the Smithsonian Institution in September 1988 for what ultimately proved to be a career-defining three-year postdoctoral visit, working on paleobotanical projects in the Paleobiology Department of NMNH with Bill DiMichele. Happily, Bill wasted no time in telling me that a weekly systematics paper discussion group existed, primarily involving the Museum's postdoctoral researchers. The group proved to be hosted immediately above us in the office of a certain lively Botany curator called Vicki Funk.

It took only the first of those memorable paper discussions for me to get the measure of Vicki. She was one of us, ensuring that everyone had their say and never, ever talking down to anyone. Her contributions to the debates were clear and forthright, and although they occasionally exposed her periodic reluctance to actually read the paper under discussion, Vicki would be the first person to laugh at herself for any consequent faux pas. Only first-rate discussion groups lead to the publication of related papers, and this period of the group's existence (later identified by Vicki as its heyday) was – and remains – very important to me. 

Vicki's innate egalitarianism meant that only gradually did I begin to appreciate her broader importance in the systematics world, learning that she had played a pivotal role in laying the groundwork for botanical cladistics alongside Chris Humphries in Britain and Kare Bremer in Sweden. Though by the time I knew her she had begun to drift away from hard-core cladistics, perturbed by the laddish excesses of certain infamous colleagues. Vicki was a restless vessel of many passions, but at the time we first met her greatest academic investment was in progressing the Flora of the Guianas program, which had its innovative aspects but was rooted in traditional herbarium taxonomy and floristics. Vicki embraced the new and the old with equal conviction. 

After I left the Smithsonian in 1991, my separation from Vicki lasted a mere fortnight, as she had invited me to guest lecture on a cladistics course that she was running at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The course was fun, as always with Vicki. Towards its close, she and I were invited to what proved to be a memorably riotous dinner at the home of one of the researchers attending the course, namely Paula Rudall, who I had not previously met and would marry a quarter of a century later. 

I naturally assumed that there were plenty more years left in our intermittent but mutually catalytic friendship, and I am desperately sad to discover that I was wrong. Vicki was not someone who merely touched your life but rather someone who hit it broadside on. You knew from the first second exactly where you stood with her, for she always told it exactly as she saw it. She loved telling, and being told, darkly humorous stories, though some of her best would be problematic to commit to print. Feathers were inevitably ruffled on occasion as a result of her scrupulous honesty, but few people can boast as big a heart. So many of us benefited from her extraordinary generosity, or had our spirits raised by her unquenchable energy, irrepressible humour and general joie de vivre. From serviceman's daughter to Woodstock veteran to pioneer cladist to stout defender of descriptive taxonomy and the world's herbaria, her impact was profound and her contribution unique, both professionally and personally. 

Chelsea Specht

Perhaps the proudest moment of my life to date was being able to present Vicki with the Asa Gray Award for lifetime achievement in plant systematics. Vicki was President of American Society of Plant Taxonomists in 2006 and inspired my passion for the science and the society. She came to my presidential address in 2017 despite a recent back surgery, insisting on being there in person to support me as I struggled through making my slides with a broken arm. She was simultaneously the best friend, colleague, mentor, hostess, advocate, inspiration and life-mate anyone could ask for. Strong but humble, fiercely loyal. Her legacy is in all of us who have been touched by her generosity and formed by her example. I am thankful to her husband and partner in crime, Jim Nix, who has allowed all of us to share Vicki with him all these years, and especially those last days, and who fought to keep hope alive through some pretty dramatic times. Botany and botanists were robbed of her presence far too early. Her spirit lives on where compositae roam, which have a global distribution that seems directly correlated with the reach of her impact. I love and miss you, Vicki.